Spring in Yellowstone National Park (Photo Essay)

Looking upstream at Slough Creek in the northeast corner of Yellowstone.

I recently spent five days in Yellowstone National Park with some wonderful NRDC supporters. We saw a ton of wildlife, went on some great hikes, laughed a lot, and enjoyed an early spring in Yellowstone.

Our first national park, Yellowstone is an extraordinary place, and it comes alive in the spring. Grizzly moms with new cubs in tow, waterfowl in their breeding plumage back up north for the summer, red newborn bison calves running circles around their mothers, free-flowing rivers swollen with snowmelt; Yellowstone is a fine place to shed your winter coat for summer (especially when it’s 80 degrees in May and a heart-stopping swim in Slough Creek is irresistible).

We’ve neutered much of the American landscape in the name of progress, but a few places, like Yellowstone, remain wild. Such places are becoming increasingly rare, which means we must work harder to keep them whole, intact, wild.

Enjoy some photos of Yellowstone’s wildness.

(Click on the photo to see a larger image.)

A pair of cow elk on a ridge at dawn.

Soda Butte Creek and the Beartooth Mountains.

A pronghorn buck eating breakfast.

I've previously written about how much I love Slough Creek. Here's a shot of lower Slough before it joins the Lamar River.

A grizzly bear on the bank of Soda Butte Creek.

Evening light in the Lamar Valley, America's Serengeti.

Three pronghorn does walking through a sea of sagebrush.

A big bison skull.

A male blue grouse strutting his stuff for the ladies. (Also, check out his furry legs. So cool.)

Beautiful photos! We just came back from Yellowstone and encountered snow and hail with occasional sunshine. In any case, the park is beautiful and left us with unforgettable memories of bisons walking beside our car and cabin.

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Switchboard is the staff blog of the Natural Resources Defense Council, the nation’s most effective environmental group. For more about our work, including in-depth policy documents, action alerts and ways you can contribute, visit NRDC.org.